Ad-tech stocks have generally enjoyed strong returns in 2023, buoyed by a rather fierce tech rally. Ad spending growth showing initial signs of stabilizing in the back half of the year, with ad spend growing YoY in each month from July to October.

Bitcoin is susceptible to a noisy, bifurcation between bulls and bears with extreme statements, such as: “Bitcoin will go to a $1 million” or “Bitcoin is a ponzi scheme and will go to $0.” The truth is that Bitcoin has risen 7,000% in the past 10 years and smashed every record in equities in the past 15 years. Yet, it has also weathered multiple 70%+ drawdowns, but then against all odds, is capable of a full recovery within 3.5 years -- every time. Our firm offers a rare, yet valuable roadmap for this volatile asset. Not only did we call the Bitcoin bottom at $15,500, but we also called the previous Bitcoin top at the $58,000 range. If you look at this rationally, it only makes sense to try and participate in this asset while limiting the downside. Most especially, if you can buy at the bottom, which is exactly what we set our readers up to do in 2023.

Cloud stocks have been a mixed bag for investors heading into the end of the year, as a handful of names — Confluent, Sprinklr, HashiCorp, Bill, Paycom — plunged following their earnings reports with growth set to slow, while others — Datadog, Elastic, Salesforce – soared on renewed optimism about AI prospects.

Tesla’s China struggles are persisting, as the American OEM saw its monthly sales decline substantially year-over-year in November, continuing a string of weak growth that began in August.

Cybersecurity stocks have performed well in 2023, rising about +26.5% YTD, with the security backdrop boosted by an increase in data breaches and ransomware.

Nvidia has surged this year with 241% gains YTD, which has more than doubled the returns of the FAANGs. This is no small feat considering it’s widely understood Big Tech is holding up the broader market. Valuations are stretched and leadership is only narrowing; to say there’s pressure going into Nvidia’s report this evening is an understatement.

Apple’s Services segment was one of the brightest spots in a relatively in-line earnings report at the beginning of November, topping an $85 billion run rate as growth jumped back to the high double-digits after a string of single-digit growth.

BYD more than doubled Tesla’s China sales in October as Tesla’s sales slipped on a month-over-month basis, while NEV startups showed strong sales numbers across the board. China’s new energy vehicle (NEV) industry continues to exhibit solid momentum, with September seeing NEV sales rise about +22% YoY and October estimated to see around +34% YoY growth.

Solar is arguably one of the market’s most sold-off industries at the moment, with the Invesco Solar ETF falling more than 42% YTD as the industry struggles to find growth in a high-rate environment. With implied Fed funds futures suggesting interest rates will remain above 5% through Q2 2024 before slowly dropping to the 3.75% range by year-end 2025, the industry is still facing a high-rate environment with more possible adverse demand effects for multiple quarters ahead.

The majority of other sectors are confirming a continuation of the 2022 bear market, meanwhile, a handful of big tech names, with outsized weighting in the major indexes, suggest that they want to go higher. Though this pattern of narrow leadership where the market is held up by 7 stocks is unsustainable and a warning of an unhealthy market, it can continue, and likely will, at least into late 2023/early 2024.

Earnings season has officially kicked off, with Big Tech headlining a busy week next week: Microsoft and Google report on Tuesday, followed by Meta on Wednesday, and Amazon on Thursday. Big Tech stocks have seen their dominance over the broader indexes soar this year, with the Magnificent 7 reaching nearly 30% of the S&P 500’s weighting, higher now than at its peak in 2022 and up from 20.0% at the beginning of this year.

After Nvidia added $750 billion in value this year on the backs of surging AI chip demand, investors are quickly searching for the next trillion-dollar AI winner. AI is the best investment opportunity of our lifetimes, and although Apple (AAPL) has been relatively overlooked as an AI play, the tech giant could quickly become a force to be reckoned with in the AI space.

Real Vision invited Beth Kindig back for a candid interview with Raoul Pal for a one-hour discussion on how to position for AI. As discussed in the interview, the reason that AI will be the best investment opportunity of our lifetime is because of the impact it will have on GDP. In the 1-hour interview, Beth points out that the potential of AI to revolutionize nearly every sector, boost productivity, reduce costs, and significantly influence GDP is unparalleled. To be exact, AI is estimated to add up to $15.7 trillion to the global economy by 2030, and drive a market 5x the size of tech’s current global spend. Beth tweeted this in 2019.

Cybersecurity is one of the highest costs that enterprises face at 12% of IT budgets on average, and this cost is rapidly rising. While a company can lay off staff or reduce marketing and R&D expenses during a period of lower growth, enterprises cannot compromise on cybersecurity.

We’ve had unwavering conviction in Nvidia’s AI story since November of 2018. In fact, it was our leading position going into 2023 and our AI allocation of 45% exceeded Stanley Druckenmiller at 29%, meanwhile, Druckenmiller was celebrated for having a leading AI portfolio.

The two most important markets that are driving the S&P 500 is oil and the US dollar. Both are suggesting a continuation of the equity rally for another leg higher, but then the also suggest a return to volatility over a longer time horizon. In this article, we will examine the levels that must hold, as well as introduce the important supporting markets to track right now so that one can maneuver any further upside in the markets as well as the coming volatility that may follow.

September is widely known to be the worst month for tech as it’s the only month to see negative average returns for the past decade for the Nasdaq 100. Meanwhile, the index is entering September up 42.5% YTD, setting up investors who are sitting on paper gains for potentially a large disappointment. With this many cross currents, there is no shortage of well-supported narratives. For this reason, we believe the best means to navigate the current markets is by focusing on price. If we are going to see a major pullback, this will show up in specific price patterns breaking through critical support. Until then, we believe it wise to not fight the current trend, even with the high probability of a recession manifesting within the next six months.

Tesla stock has rallied through most of 2023 during a time when consensus was estimating sales to grow +23% y/y but earnings to decline 15%. The main driver behind the decline in earnings estimates is that Tesla has decided to lower prices to increase volumes at the expense of margins. Starting in Q322 through Q223, operating margins have declined from 17.2% to 9.6%. Initially, Tesla cited making sure certain models qualified for the EV tax credit and later higher interest rates as the primary reasons for lowering prices.

Nvidia guided fiscal Q2 at $11 billion, which is 53% higher than analyst expectations of $7.2 billion. The stock was up 25% after hours, adding $200 billion to its market cap in the matter of a day.

Going into this year, we were positioned for bottom-line focused investment themes that we felt would be able to deliver earnings growth due to secular demand for its products, and in some cases, be able to reduce costs to maintain profitability.

In the clip below, Beth Kindig discusses how AI will drive stock market caps well into the trillions of dollars.

On June 30th, the NASDAQ posted the strongest first six months in the index’s history, dating back to 1971. The 6-month returns of 30.5% in 2023 easily beats the prior record of 25.2% in 2019. The majority of the rally was driven by seven stocks: Apple, Microsoft, Nvidia, Amazon, Tesla, Meta, Google. These 7 stocks are up a collective 98% YTD, while the equal weight S&P 500, which provides an equal weighting to all 500 stocks in the index, is up only 9%.

After the strong rally, it appears the market is taking profits on commentary around the outlook for margins. It’s not only that they were lower quarter-over-quarter (QoQ), but also Tesla provided zero insight as to how much lower margins can go. The market does not like uncertainty. It’s somewhat ironic that during the call Musk can wax poetic about the complexities of AI, neural net training, the 6-million dollar man, and robotic taxis yet when it comes to basic profitability drivers, he can’t say anything. The former drove the price post Q123 and the latter is driving the price today.

Semiconductors are the common denominator across the burgeoning technology trends of the next decade. Artificial Intelligence, 5G, high-performance computing, Internet-of-Things, gaming, electric vehicles, and robotics, among others, all require semiconductors to power them. These trends make semiconductor stocks an ideal investment and perhaps the most important space for tech investors to monitor.

In May and June, I stated that our firm was not buying Nvidia right now. Well, similar to the weather, this has changed.

Tier 1 Media outlets such as Fox Business News, Bloomberg and Real Vision interviewed Beth four times over the past month about her call on Nvidia and also picked her brain on other AI-related topics.

This analysis looks at First Solar, Enphase and Tesla as beneficiaries of the Inflation Reduction Act. IRA’s primary objective is to spur investments in clean energy, transport and manufacturing.

Although many AI stocks will not report enough AI revenue to survive the fierce, competitive battle the tech industry faces due to AI/ML, Wall Street investors can reasonably assume that Microsoft will be a leader in this space.

When the market was selling tech last year, the I/O Fund was buying AI leaders. For example, from September 2021 through January of 2023, we initiated 9 buy alerts for NVDA below $210. The last two alerts were at $108 and $149 in late 2022. We initiated buy alerts for additional AI stocks, as well, resulting in a 45% allocation to AI going into May. Compare this to Stanley Druckenmiller, who had 29.5% allocation in AI, and has been covered by the press as the leading AI investor.

The smartphone market continues to be hit hard in q1, with prices down 20% and shipments down 13%, according to Canalys. Despite double digit decline across the industry, Apple delivered marginal growth on its iPhone sales at +1.5%.